The invention relates to a carding element which comprises a support and a plurality of saw-tooth wire sections arranged parallel to one another on said support, for use in a carding machine having a carding cylinder, a saw-tooth wire helically wound around said cylinder, and at least one carding element cooperating with said cylinder.
Such carding elements are well-known in the art. They comprise saw-tooth wire section, which are each arranged in a plane that coincides with a diameter plane of said cylinder. The term diameter plane is intended to designate a plane that is perpendicular to the axis of the cylinder. The main advantage of such carding machines resides in a better quality of the carded fibres and in a more uniform parallel arrangement of the fibres in the web. However, it has been found that in treating mixtures of fibers consisting of cotton on the one hand and synthetic fibres on the other hand or synthetic fibres of different denier, no uniform mixture of the different fibres could be attained. When carding a mixture of an equal amount of cotton fibres and polyester fibres, these different types of fibres tended to separate and lead to a non-uniform composition of the fibre web.